Suits Is USA’s One Show That Is Getting Deeper, Not Cheesier

But the humor was not what I was most concerned about going into season 2. My worry was that USA would go all USA on Suits and make it into a cheesy lawyer version of Burn Notice (and so help me if that happens). Thankfully, last night’s episode went a long way in assuaging my fears, giving us some deeper glimpses into the characters’ pasts and introducing a far more encompassing storyline that sets Mike’s secret as a possible lynchpin.

First, from Mike’s dinner with Jessica (the badass Gina Torres from Firefly), we learned that his parents died in a car accident when he was just 11 years old, putting him in the care of his grandmother. The incident was actually the reason he wanted to become a lawyer in the first place. “We had a case,” he tells her. “This restaurant kept feeding Mr. Fenton drinks. Didn’t matter. I felt so helpless, and I didn’t want to feel that way ever again.” This, along with Donna’s subtle drop of some tension between Harvey and his own family, points to more layered personal subplots that will keep Suits from becoming a superficial one-liner marathon.

And most importantly, we learned about the other half of Pearson-Hardman: Daniel Hardman, unscrupulous asshole extraordinaire, who is back and coming for Jessica’s job. As much as I loved Suits’ first season, dealing mostly on a case-by-case basis with Mike learning the ropes at Pearson-Hardman, they definitely needed a broader conflict to sustain the show’s continuation. A new villain (thank God idiot Trevor finally seems to be getting out of the picture, though maybe not with Mike getting all dark and throwing Trevor’s social security number in his face) and a conflict that pits all our favorite characters on the same side, could not be a more perfect way to kick off the season.

The banter was top notch as always, the characters are getting more complex, and there’s a new bad guy in town. There couldn’t be a better time to hop on the Suits train and strap yourselves in for season 2.